Friday, September 22, 2017

Passionflix is a shiny new on-demand channel that shows romatic movies from all genres and time periods but the most exciting thing about Passionflix is that this service is turning popular romance books into quality movies by authors we love!

The first movie, based on Alessandra Torre's Hollywood Dirt, was released this week on September 20th. I'm familiar with Alessandra Torre, but I had not read Hollywood Dirt, so this past summer when I heard it was the first film in production by Passionflix, I decided to check out the audio book and I really enjoyed it! It's a great fish out of water, enemies to lovers romance.

Cole Masten is THE Hollywood "It" man. He has won numerous awards, is super attractive, and has a seemingly perfect marriage with America's sweetheart...except Cole comes home early and finds her screwing someone else. Summer Jenkins lives in Quincy, Georgia, where Cole's new project is being filmed. After a tense first meeting where Summer threatens to shoot him, Cole decides that Summer is just the woman to play his leading lady in the film. Hijinks, sexy times, and country politics ensue. It was a fun book.

So, how was the movie you ask? It was a fabulous adaptation of book to movie. This was so well done, and all of the pivotal moments that you expect from the book to be there were pretty much there. The movie had a two hour run time, my girl Mindy Cohn from the Facts of Life was in it, and Johann Urb and Emma Rigby had the kind of chemistry that makes you smile stupid while watching it. They also had a lot of heat and the sexy times scenes were hot without being lewd (and the perv in me was wondering how far those scenes would go!) I think the passion on screen matched the book perfectly, so I have high hopes for Jax and Gia in Passionflix's next venture, Sylvia Day's Afterburn/Aftershock.

The Passionflix subscription is only 5.99 a month, and the original programming combined with the old favorites like Moonstruck and Overboard makes it worth the small cost. Congrats to the women who started Passionflix - this freshman effort is making me look forward to more!

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Burning to Ride contains two novellas: Burned by Lust and Burned by Blackmail. Both of these novellas seemed more like the slice of life extras that one would read after they know and care about the characters that are featured. As far as expectations of an MC book, they are both more MC adjacent. You get peek into the world but the novellas don't live there. The novellas live at Wilde's Hotel bar, which is just fine, but it's not the club's actual clubhouse or place of business. It's a place they go to in order to drink and have fun but there is 75% of the MC lifestyle missing for those of us used to reading MC books.

In Burned by Lust, we meet Hade and Lee. Lee is running from her past and ends up hooking up with Hade. They quickly fall for each other, but Hade's MC has this rule that the President can't have an old lady...and Hade is next in line. On one hand, I enjoyed the randomness of their relationship. Lee was this nomad that showed up and ended up never leaving. On the other hand, I never got the chance to really be invested in their relationship.

In Burned by Blackmail, I actually was able to be more invested in the relationship, but the premise was a little silly. Briony, the owner of Wilde's Hotel, is being pressured to sell her hotel. The developer, Cole, come into the bar and they end up having a steamy one night stand. Neither of them knows who the other is somehow. Briony takes the advice of the MC President and decides to blackmail him into marriage, as part of their one night stand gets caught on camera in the hotel garage. Moving past that premise, and I do love a marriage of convenience or other circumstances, and Briony and Cole grew on me.

If you are looking for an MC read, this isn't really it, but if you are looking for a couple of stories about some rough people who fall in love, these two novellas might be what you are looking for.

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